Hello, fellow BD people, I hope you are doing well.
With the “endless” journey, there’s one such traverse that we all would enjoy, exploring the famous and beautiful places in the world while chowing the exquisite food. While it is a “fact” that we all would love a day’s rest, a good food beats all of those combined.
I had to give up on that day’s rest I had planned for myself as a lady friend of mine, when she had returned BD after up 6 whole months thanks to her summer break. The most famous Bengali dialogue, “Jibone aar ki ase? Jai, kheye ashi” swept through my mind even though I was low on cash. After all of us had reached her house, she told that she wanted to try out a cuisine that we were dying to try out.
And so, that’s what my friends and I had set out to do yesterday. It’s a shame though, the two friends who wanted to try out this place were the ones missing out. This “food tour” was sudden and spontaneous with one major twist in the end.
We set out at 6 pm in one of my friend’s car. The sky was as beautiful as it would get, the traffic was building up to match that.
Considering the time, it was “too late” as the restaurant to be busy with other guests.
First Panda Dumpling
Fortunately, the place was empty with only a handful of guests.
(I forgot to take the pic of this panda, this was taken from one of my friends🥲)
A chonky panda welcomed us.
The decor portrayed that we had entered into a Chinese town. The origin of the dumpling and written in the wall.
Starting with the chilli paste. This was a bit different than your average chilli flake sauce. This one had peanuts that carried the heaviness and flavour of the chilli. This made it a crunchy chilli sauce, not what I had expected but I liked it.
The first thing they served was the chopsticks. I cannot stress enough to never ever use the metal chopsticks. They just make your food slip off. I used it first time that day, I’m used to using wooden and ceramic ones, and it was a disaster.
The first item arrived just 15 minutes later, a fast service considering that the amount of guests were increasing slowly. This one was called steamed dumpling with chicken. They gave us 12 pieces of it which we split between us 4 equally.
It was just we had anticipated, a great mixture of flavours with the fillings(chicken) with the sourly soy that came with it.
The second dish came in a bit late, about 5 mins later. This one was called Spicy Dumpling with Beef Onion. But boy was sit worth the wait. This one had 10 pieces, so we each received 2 and a quarter of the dumplings each.
The fillings were of minced beef with onion but this one was covered with the sauce that was like a spicy curry with less heaviness. The combo was good.
Overall, the place was good. I assured it to be good because I saw many Asians(not Indians) in the restaurant before us trying out the dishes with more of them coming in as time passed.
You may say that I’m racially profiling Asians, that they eat dumpling only but I’m an Asian too, and I genuinely believe that if the place was not good they would’ve picked some other restaurant that probably would’ve served better dumplings.
A total of BDT 758 cost us. A good choice. Next, we pondered on getting the next thing that we were hungry for. Ice cream was off the table was eating a spicy food before a sweet food would give you a bad case of diarrhoea. A freshly squeezed juice was a viable option but we nodded that off as we figured out that we were hungry. So, we decided to head toward the nearest BFC joint, the sad part: none of us had any money. I was a teensy bit low on cash, my friends had almost nothing but still we moved onto another restaurant and hoped to order something cheap.
One of our friends(girl) had her date waiting outside after we ate, so she had to leave early. She would join us later in the tour.
What we didn’t know that there was another joint just above BFC that none of us had tried before. If you’ve guessed “Al-Baik”, you are absolutely right😁.
The Main Event - Al-Baik
We were blasted away when we saw the menu. The prices on the burgers were astronomical, we were not prepared for that kinda meal. But, the chicken pieces were super attractive and the price was low when we calculated it. The 2 pc chicken seemed to be the best one as it cost BDT 329 which would come up with a bun, garlic sauce, and fries. So, we unanimously agreed on getting the chicken, a soft drink and a side dish of felafel.
How did we get the money? This lady friend(from abroad) of ours had been keeping her credit card as a secret. So, after confirming that none of us had any money, she decided to bring it out. Such are women ig, beautiful and cunning.
After 20 minutes of waiting, we got our orders. Look at the beauties! A big blunder on our side, we didn’t check if the felafel was a veggie option or non-veg. So, when we got the felafel it was the veggies… something I didn’t fully regret as it was good.
And the main attraction of today’s post is this. Look at this beauty. The amount of garlic sauce(I love sauce), the amount of fries and the buns. We could make up our own burgers with this. If we consider the fries as an average side order of fries in a generic restaurant it would’ve cost 100. The sauce and bun may be 30-40. So overall, the chicken pieces were 200, total. This is very low if you take the other fried chicken joints into consideration. They would charge 120 per piece and give the same size as this one.
The best part, this was broast chicken. So, the spices were inside the chicken too.
We gobbled slowly. Took us half an hour to finish it all and left us full. The grand total was about BDT 1500.
So, we went from having 0 cash to ordering about a thousand taka food.
Honestly, I believe that this one was super good, even for a fake version. The owner got his chefs from high tier cooking schools and the price was good, not sure about the burgers though😅 as each cost about BDT 849.
Maybe I’ll try it out but as it stands, I was very satisfied that we made the right choice by going up stairs.
Tells you a lot about life too. You just never know when a brilliant opportunity is just around the corner of a “proper” goal.
Thank you guys for reading so far, see you legends on the next one!